


My Life With MayMay

by IzzySings



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood, Coming of Age, Economics, Friendship, Love, MayMay, Poetry, Possible Character Death, character death mention, class, narrative poems, not confirmed death, proverty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:46:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7467441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IzzySings/pseuds/IzzySings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of poems about my life</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Life With MayMay

On a Summer Day  
One summer day I was sitting on a cheap, plastic chair under a white umbrella shading table across from my nanny, MayMay. I knew that she had brought her bathing suit today, but she would never go into the pool. She would always shake her head or say she was too tired to go in. Or she would make up some excuse about getting sunburned when really she never moved from that plastic chair under the shade. I wanted her to experience swimming with me; I wanted her to feel included. I looked straight into her black eyes and asked the question I asked about twice a week, “MayMay, why don’t you ever go in the pool?”  
She turned to me looking without emotion. “I ain’t going in no swimming pool.”  
So I pushed in a whiney voice. “But we have your bathing suit and you never go in! Ever!”   
Just as she was about to say something that made no sense to my 8-year-old brain, she replied, ”Well some day you can teach me to swim, then I’ll go in.”

I jumped up excited and darted towards the pool, as quickly as I was allowed, my feet slapping the burning pavement. I wanted, for once, to teach someone else something for a change, rather than rely on them. 

MayMay always said I was independent, but it never felt that way to me. I always needed help with my learning and reading. I practiced my swimming all that day, trying to swim freestyle as best I could, trying to impress her and myself. I showed off the best technique I could muster with my utter lack of experience and ability for my age. I put in a lot of work that day and for many days to come, but I never got the chance to teach her to swim--not before we let her go. 

I think back on my time with MayMay and try to remember everything I did with her. She was my nanny starting from when I was a baby until around 8. Sometimes we try to call her phone but it’s always disconnected. We try to track her down but with no success. I feel like she’s probably moved away, but that’s my hopeful thought. I feel like, by now, she’s most likely dead. I can’t stop trying to remember because that’s the thing isn’t it? You don’t really try to remember someone or something when you know you’ve lost it forever. It’s a way of grieving, I suppose. It’s scary to think that the person I spent a lot of my first 8 years of my life with is now gone. I don’t really think I’ve come to terms with it, maybe I won’t, maybe me writing this will help me? I never knew much about her and never did anything for her. Nothing that ever meant much anyway. I wish I’ known her better, I wish I had taught her how to swim.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
Fried Chicken  
It was around my second grade year when we really started to sell our house. I had known we were going to be moving since around 1st grade but we actually started to show our house during my second grade year. Everyday after school I would go to my nanny MayMay’s house. And when I say house I met the old inner city apartment that she rents. It was on the fifth floor and my brother and I would always try to race the elevator by running up the stairs to beat it to the top, we may or may not have won. Her apartment just quick 90 degree turn from the elevator doors. As we entered her apartment there was always a smell, a smell that was extremely unique. At first the smell made me dizzy and lightheaded but I soon grew out of it.   
Everyday she would make us dinner. It wasn’t different, but it was the same every day. She made fried chicken with a recipe from the side of the bread crumb box. It was, as you would assume a very greasy meal. I learned what parts of the chicken to eat and what not to eat, how to crack a chicken bone to get the marrow, and of course how to make fried chicken. We didn’t really want to complain and we grew quite sick of it, but after months we just accepted it as a part of life.  
I feel like we never complained because she knew she wasn’t well of at all and we couldn’t ask more from the woman. The same woman that taught us how to love. The thing she taught us was love because that's all she really could give us and all did for us. She taught us a lot of things but I credit her for my compassion and my love for life. Most people think that compassion is something you’re born with, but they’re wrong. Compassion is something learned and something that needs to be helped along and developed. Although anyone can be compassionate and loving you have to learn it from someone, someone good. That someone was MayMay.

 

 

 

 

~~~  
The Difference  
We were sitting in my old living room one day when I was much younger, around 7. Me on one big comfy chair, Andrew on the cushions and MayMay on the black leather one that had a few cracked from age and wear. We were talking about tomorrow when we were going to go and have a playdate with our friend Siena. Siena was Asian and we have known her family for a while and our mothers were very good friends. There house was big and their back yard fun and sloped.   
Then out of the blue, MayMay says something I will never forget, “Andrew now you listen here. Don’t be dating those Asians stick to your own kind, you too Isabella.”   
We didn’t really understand sitting there extremely confused at the statement. Our own kind, what had that meant? What could have it meant to a 7 year old? Neither myself nor Andrew had ever really noticed a difference. When we went over the next day I tried to look for a difference. I look at the house, the backyard, the clothes. All I found was that she was a little darker skinned than me, and I didn’t think that made a difference.   
She was older and a bit stuck in her ways so I don’t hold that statement against her. She was racist but she didn’t teach me to be racist. Instead that showed me what racism was so I could learn from that. Even though she was my role model and an adult, sometimes they aren’t perfect and you have to learn from their faults. 

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
The Block  
During the summers, MayMay would drive us to her house. Her block resembled a pile of old, peeled white paint. Old houses, dusty sideways, cracked windows and cement, everything was broken. When we were bored she would get one of her friends to take us around the block to a junk pile. The was a massive pile of old things that the garbage men didn’t pick up. It consisted of numerous bikes, TVs, tables, black trash bags, and bolts. Everything there was covered in a heavy coat of mud or dust. We would play on it and mess around creating new things. I loved that pile but I don’t think anyone else loved it. To say the least, we visited a very poor part of town.  
Her house had an odor and the whole block was just broken. All that wasn’t broken were the people that lived on that block. They would always smile at us and say hi. I always looked out the window and wondered what their lives were like. Sometimes I would see a bit now and again and it felt like I was able to see how life really was. I made friends with some of the children on the block although there weren’t many and I noticed was that they were just as happy and kind as I was.  
MayMay taught me that the life I lived with my pretty house, my green yard, my clean alleyways, and my perfect sidewalks wasn’t everyone’s life too. It was mine and other people didn’t have it. I would sometimes daydream about taking a person to my house or giving it to them, I wanted them to have it too. It felt unfair to see them not have the same life as me and that life wasn’t fair. She also showed me that there are nice people everywhere you go. You just have to look through the cracks, the dust, the garbage, and the broken. And then maybe, just maybe, you might get to see them. 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
Mr. CeeCee  
I remember her block, like I had lived there and in some ways I probably did. It wasn’t an escape nor a haven it was just a place and I was there. Sidewalks uneven and wild, paint peeled off the house as though it despised its nature, and the streets a bassen for whatever passed by. The people, sitting in white plastic chairs, looking out at their yards that held whatever happened last night. The people, it wasn’t just the place that made them so it was themselves.   
There was a man named Mr.CeeCee. MayMay would hang around him like a dog to a bone, or he would just be waiting for her. It wasn’t love, they had no connection, it was something I didn’t understand. MayMay didn’t seem to like him but he was always there like the ever present cloud that threatens to storm but never does. He had dogs that didn’t seem to be his and clothes that were in a sad state. Mr.CeeCee talked to us like we were treasure or didn’t say anything to us at all. His long, grabbing fingers reaching for something then falling back to his side.   
I shrunk away from him when ever he drifted near, almost as if he were to pull me down. As if he could drag me down with him and chain me here to the god forsaken street. But that's how everyone was on the street, traps open waiting for us to make a wrong move and keep us here. It was like quicksand and i never went near it. So easy to fall in but so hard to get out of. Everyone wanted out but they had already been there too long and just faded into the dusty roads, the broken glass, and the disturbed houses. They had given up the fight and all they wanted was for it to not be so lonely.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
Dirty Laundry  
I don’t what is was about the laundromat that felt so safe. The smell was musky and the floors dirty with grime. The windows painted with the handprints of those before me. We said she could waste her clothes with ours and not waste the money. But she dragged us there anyway. We sat and waiting watching the clothes go around and around. It wasn’t all bad though it was exciting going to the laundromat, I crawled, hands and knees, searching for the treasured coins. I would find pockets full of the cherished objects. The coins were like little movies telling me their story. Sometimes they would be green and moldy, a long boring life. Then they would be dented and scratched, a long fight to get here.   
We sat in those old, stained with age, chairs and watched the clothes go around and around. I would stand and move to the next machine peering in, and from the clothes I tried to piece their story together. But I never could really quench my curiosity with a pretend story I thought of. I always wanted to know more, more about MayMay, more about the clothes and more about her world.  
MayMay’s world was so small and yet so big at the same time, her street, the laundromat, the run down Kroger, our house, just one big cycle we repeated on a weekly basis. It was boring but it felt safe, almost like a routine with some religious importance. I never complained because it felt like a secret world I entered and MayMay was the only way into it. I was almost addicted to the raw reality that MayMay dragged us into and then we ran to catch up with.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
Mary Barley  
Her name was Mary Barley. She always said she was brown not black. Her hair always tied up and her face decorated with her glasses. Her body was big and soft and always dressed with white pants and striped shirts. We listened to what she said as if she were a preacher or maybe even God. But that's what she was like to us, she was the only constant in our lives. She was the only thing we relied on even when we didn’t want to. She was there to sit on, there to give her opinion, and she was just there to be there. I guarded MayMay like something that was fragile and good. I didn’t want her tainted by the rest of the world.   
She seemed to know so much but she rarely changed at all, she never used her knowledge. MayMay, with her fried chicken and constant trips to the ghetto Kroger, we loved her. Love it might have been but I didn’t really know her. She was my other mother, but beyond that all the lay was unknown. That's why I’m going to find her. Not to say goodbye not to say hello. I want to know her not just as MayMay but as Mary Barely, compassionate and caring beyond words. I’ve said my goodbyes through my writing and I guess now I ask “who was she and who is she know?” I don’t know what I’ll find but I’m hoping for the truth. And maybe I won’t like what I’ll find, but I can’t accept that she's gone without quenching my curiosity.  
~~~  
Shadow On Her Shoulder  
We must have spent minutes that added up to hours, and then hours that added up to days in that car. MayMay must have spent minutes that added up to weeks on that phone. It was like a shadow that could always be found on her shoulder instead of behind her. But we gave it to her, so really it was a gifted companion. I heard some discussion about the phone between my mother and my other one, they were upset about the time she spent on it. The seconds, minutes, and moments had actually added up. I knew she spent too much time with it, but I never said anything. But the phone interested me, she cared for it like a human and used it like air-- as it might have been nothing less than vital for her. I had the pull of curiosity that lead me to do so many things before. I wanted to uncover the mystery of what the shadow on her shoulder held. I would inch slowly closer and closer to the sacred object that held my attention and intentions. MayMay was spread out on our couch like a cat would in the sunlight. I slowly crept behind MayMay. I quieted my breathing as best I could and I moved myself as close to the phone as I dared. I heard muffled voices through it. They spoke of streets, addresses, money and times. As I started to gather more MayMay stopped her speech, she had found me out. She turned towards me.  
What the heck are you doing, I know what you did it not nice to listen in on people that’s how you turn into a snake and you ain't a snake are ya?  
I shook my head and my face turned red, embarrassed but not so much. My mind swirled with the conversation I had heard. The streets I had heard of vaguely, they seemed foggy and almost foreign. And the talk of money was very unnerving. We never talked about money in our family, it just wasn’t discussed-- ever. I walked away and tried not to listen in again. Instead I watched her with that phone from a distance. Not long after that did the gross cocoon become a very permanent residence for us, and the street people invaded our space. And MayMay would let them.

 

 

 

~~~  
The People in Our Car  
The car, the golden brown minivan appealing from afar but up-close it was utterly unattractive and repulsive. Scary to think about how much of my youth was spent inside it, like a gross cocoon that I could never break free from. It wasn’t really the appearance I couldn’t bear, it was those inside that roamed its seats.   
We would pile in, my twin me and my sister, all into the back and we would wait. Then they climbed into our car and we didn’t know them. People from outside our safe haven infested our shelter. They smelled, of the sun and sweat and drunkenness. They breathed in our air and spit it back out tainted by their presence. We didn’t know them but MayMay didn’t care. All that separated us was the fuzzy seating and a small stretch of air.   
We shrunk against our seats finding no escape, we barely dared to breathe the stained air. The people in front of us struck up foreign conversation with MayMay, their dark skin contrasting with the light brown of the plush seats. I hear them talk of addresses and street names but they sound distant and unfamiliar and I try to drown them out.  
I don’t speak until MayMay randomly starts to ask me questions of simple addition. I was doing her math for her but I was also performing for these random street people. MayMay would say things like like that I was smart but I didn’t feel smart I felt like a show. When you would pull over one would hop out and money would be given. Then we would drive off to the next place and it happened again with the money and the counting. They were never the same people who would enter the car and that scared me. They would always scent the air differently but we would always react the same way. We wouldn’t get our homework done we would just be pulled along from one place to another like cargo in the trunk. And we felt like cargo but we were too scared and confused to care.

 

 

 

 

~~~  
The Girl with the Braids  
There was girl, a girl with thin dark braids that sprung from all parts of her head. They were like weeds or maybe snakes. We picked her up everyday at a school, grey and resembling a miniature prison. It was surrounded by tall bleak fences. They loomed over the building and all those who travelled in and out. They were there almost solely to remind its captives that they could never escape the life they were given.   
She would hop into our disgusting golden brown car, with its thick gross air and its stained and fuzzy seats. She looked back at us, maybe once or twice barely saying more to us than a simple “hello” then turned to MayMay and started up more foreign conversation like the rest of the riders. She dressed in bright, and tight colors that gripped her body and exposed it in the best ways, like a flower in full bloom flaunting about. Her skirts were dressed in sequins and her jeans spotted with fake jewels that made her glitter. She didn’t look like the others that rode in our car, she didn’t smell or look like them. But she had ended up here all the same, sitting where they always sat and saying the streets and the addresses like they all did.   
She always sat in the front seat, and I felt something in the pit of my stomach that could only called jealousy. She thought she sat on top of world with our MayMay. Like MayMay was hers to command. She wasn’t, and she wasn’t anything but a girl with her dark braids. Those dark braids hissed out at us like vipers while we shrunk back in our seats turning green with that dreaded emotion of jealousy. But really what was this girl to us, she was just a girl that was trying to escape those fences that swallowed everyone else. In reality she was just another traveller on the path that was set out for her. And another paying customer for our car service, nothing more nothing less to us or the world that didn’t know her.   
We came back for her everyday, and the same pattern ensued. She wore the same things, did the same things, said the same things. And every time our jealousy would grow more potent. It bubbled like a stew threatening to boil over its confines. Maybe we were tired of her, maybe we were tired of being dragged around in the back like things, not people not children. But one thing's for certain, she was the last person that rode in our car.   
It was something about this girl, or maybe the whole thing just caught up to us and we told our parents. We hadn’t for so long, to tell our parents was like to betray our other mother. MayMay was with us everyday for years, telling in some ways felt like the worse betrayal of all and at the same time the best truth of all. We couldn’t continue to have our car, and our lives infested with the people without names or faces or history. They were meaningless to us but yet we defended them, keeping them hidden from our true parents. But what had that meant, we didn’t hid them for their sake, it was for MayMay’s sake. We couldn’t bare to lose her and yet we sent her, almost pushed her close to the edge. The edge of losing her, the edge of losing our second mother. It was betrayal of a different kind, not of blood but of love.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
True Silence  
The next day would not have existed without the meaning of true Silence. Silence seemed to drag on longer than time could encapsulate. Silence had a right to be there after the night before, Silence was due to make an appearance. Last night Silence hadn’t been present, screams and yelling had been its substitute. Now that car was filled with it, it didn’t seem the peaceful type. Peace was clawed away last night, inch by inch peace didn’t exist and no one wanted to try and bring it about.   
Everyone just kinda floated through the motions, shifting uneasily at the slightest sound. MayMay was here and she wasn’t at the same time. Her being yes, herself wasn’t present. Last night yells came from the mouth of my real mother and apologizes came from my other one. MayMay couldn’t undo what had been done and so she just overflowed with apology, one never hesitating after the other. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Lisa I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Like a rushing river crashes against the rocks that were my mother’s words, spoken loud and harsh. We were on the other side of the house, which felt like the side of the world to us and we could still feel the sting of her words. We still could hear the shouts, we could never escape them anyway. Anywhere we tried to hide they reached us. We too had been the river, or more like the stream with was stopped dead by the rocks, and somehow we had flowed around them one way or another. All we could do was hope that MayMay could flow around them too. Her words were true and they were not evil. But even the things that are not evil and bad hurt, like all things do.   
So we all just hovered in the aftermath, like the rippleless puddles that stayed for a short while after the rain had ceased its fire. Talking was out, speaking was not valid, nothing seemed to be valid except just existing. Just breathing, moving, and carrying on were there that day after last night. But even that sometimes caused ripples in the puddle.  
We heard the words last night, although we were not supposed to. We weren’t supposed to do a lot of things apparently, but I think I knew this. Why else would we have told our mother? We weren’t supposed to have people in our car. They weren’t supposed to be drunk or high or unknown. We weren’t supposed to be driving around all day in that forsaken car. We weren’t supposed to be out so late that we wouldn’t be able to do our homework. We weren’t supposed to do a lot of things we did anyway.   
It took us a few days to get back to ourselves, a few day for the floating to stop. I would have been fine with the floating if the air wasn’t filled with constant question and tension. But that was my life, nothing was a peaceful grey, it always had to be so no one sided. There was rarely middle ground and when there was everyone dashed to grab at it. You learn fast to just cherish grey, because black and white are far worse.   
Even though we had stopped floating, signs still lingered. Hesitation to say things and to do things was like a wall between what we used to have. MayMay’s face was a sign as well, the wrinkles that rested near her eyes seemed deeper and forced. Her eyes seemed dimmer, like the light was in there but it was being held back by herself. She contained her own light, which is better and worse than having it done so by someone else. We didn’t dare bring up the fight, we feared her wrinkles would get even deeper and her eyes more dim. Even after what we had done we still cared for her, our relationship had been flown away and only scraps of it remained but we somehow started to find and put the pieces back together. Even though so didn’t fit perfectly we made it work like we always did.

 

 

 

~~~  
Where I See Her  
I see her everywhere I go, and in everything that I do. I see her when I look out my window. I remember how she folded clothes outside. She would tell us stories of her family that she never saw, and of people she didn’t talk to anymore. She would tell us little scraps and pieces of her life as she sat in the metal chairs and as she folded the sheets and towels. We would sit and listen, always thirsty for more detail, more information. We were curious children, my sister and I. My brother never sat outside with MayMay as she would fold things--he was not as interested in stories or the past. I watched her hands as she moved them swiftly, amazed at their almost mechanical functions. I tried mimicking them with my own, but mine seemed less rigid and they displeased me with their softness. 

I see MayMay in the big green trees during summer. We spent so much summer under the trees of our backyard, under the big oak that ruled over the yard. I looked tanner in its shade and she, darker. I was always jealous that when we spent time outside, she never had to wear sunscreen and I had to layer myself even when I was protected by the big trees. I remember the water and soda we would drink under them. 

Under them MayMay taught me how to braid hair. She showed me how to part a piece of hair into three and then cross them over and over until they resembled a rope. I would always practice on MayMay’s hair when she would let me. I liked the coarse texture of it and how short it was. I also loved how different it was from my horrible mess, always tangled and blonde. I would mess up sometimes, but MayMay would praise me when I got it right. She always said she would braid my hair one day, but for some reason she never did. I always waited but my hair never turned into the rope-like shape I yearned for, but really MayMay never turned it into the rope shape I yearned for. Not for the braid, but for the physical act her of doing something; I just wanted MayMay. I wanted to learn from MayMay and have something I could feel from her, so I could feel how she changed me instead of just knowing it had happened. Sometimes it was hard for me to understand how she had changed me when I couldn’t see, touch, smell or taste it. I just had to believe in MayMay, so when I Iook into the trees, I think about how she changed me, how she changed me under their great branches and thin leaves.

 

~~~  
I Like the Real People  
For two years we tried to sell our house that we had outgrown. We had either become too big or it had become too small for us. Either way it had to go. We decided to sell it right as the recession hit the housing market hard. We the children weren’t allowed in the house as it was being shown. We were whisked off to the tall tanish grey apartment building that MayMay lived in. Its residents were mostly people on oxygen tanks and those with wrinkles that suck so far in it made us shiver. But we would much rather spend our days there than at her old house, where Mr. CeeCee and all of the unknown people lived. We were glad for that. We always ran up the stairs because MayMay told us stories of how someone had died in the elevator that rode in. MayMay actually gave my sister a long-term phobia of elevators that she just recently outgrew.   
Every day we would go there, and after homework we would watch a movie. My siblings and I loved movies that were animated, but MayMay always threw a fit. MayMay liked reality; she liked when real people acted out a story. We couldn’t understand why, but now that I look back, it was written all over her face. Her age spots and aged face told the story that we were too young to grasp. She didn’t want us to believe in the animated movies. She didn’t want us to believe that our lives could end up like their extremely happy endings. Life always seemed to work out so flawlessly in the end, making MayMay roll her eyes and laugh at their naive thoughts. I didn’t want a happy ending like they had, I wanted a normal ending. But we never wanted to make MayMay upset. So we usually settled on Star Wars because it was exciting and it had real people. We would lie on the floor--me sometimes on MayMay’s back or at least leaning on her. Usually she would fall asleep halfway through the movie so in all we would end up watching that movie at least eight times. Her TV didn’t have cable, and it had the bunny ears coming from the top of it. It was small and the pictures on the screen were not as sharp as they were at our house. But it didn’t matter to us. We just enjoyed that moment: everyone peaceful, asleep on the floor together.

 

 

 

~~~  
White Houses  
The houses were on side of us as we rode along, down our streets, and the across the all familiar avenues. They were big, broad, and above all flawlessly white. They made us feel as though we were travelling through a cloud and the only thing keeping us attached to the earth, or maybe reality, was the distinct black and yellow of the roads that we were bound to. But the white that surrounded us was neither calming as a cloud nor was it soft and fluffy like a marshmallow. It felt stiff and hard, nothing round or natural about the way it was presented. It was as hard and fake as a plastic plate and just about as pleasing to me. I was always surprised when I saw people walk in and out of the white castles, a shock that anyone would want to live in those white prisons.   
Under the unbearable sun, they all resembled slowly melting wax. Like what you would see as a candle slowly dripped away. I could almost imagine them starting to sweat as the sun became too much to bear. The thought of them collapsing under the heat made them all the more displeasing but I still wanting to see it. To watch the structure slowly melt away, and its liquid state to spread out. Spreading to the not white grass, and the not white pavement slabs, and to the not white rose. I smiled at that thought to myself, but when I looked back they were still there. Not melted. Not sweating. And still not touching touching the things that were not white. I sighed at life, at the world, and at the white houses.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
The Day of The Dog  
I couldn’t tell you exactly when this happened except to say it was a scorching hot summer day with the temperature up to at least 102 degrees. Like any day of this temperature we were in the musky car. We moved slowly but everyone around seemed to move at the same pace. It was like all our cars had turned into slugs and snails made of metal. I looked through the fingerprinted and smudged windows of our car at the block of white houses we would pass. I imagined them all slowly melting down like they were made of wax, then they would slowly harden on the ground. Once again we found ourselves at MayMay’s block, under the big tree that grew out of a cinder block. But this time, unlike the times before, we didn’t get out of the car.  
Stay in the car and don’t let the dog get near or touch y'all. Just say put in here alright. And we did, motionless except for the rising of our chests and the blinking of our eyes. Then we saw what she meant, it was Mr.CeeCee. He was strolling down the block his now golden tooth glinting and his his hand wrapped around a chain with a dog attached. With every pace we became more uncomfortable around him and the tension would only sink deeper into the pits of our stomachs.He walked right up to our car with this skinny but tall structure and with his black top which made him look even more intimidating. He smiled wide letting his tooth shine and glitter at us, and we just shivered at the thing in return. We looked out the window to see the big white, spotted pitbull at the end of the chain. We shrunk back further into our seats trying to disappear before Mr.CeeCee could get near us. How yall doing? We just nodded at his words and adverted our eyes by looking down at the messy car floor. We heard the clink of the chain as he tightened his grip on the animal. He soon picked up conversation with MayMay and we did our best to tune them out and we just stared down at the poor dog. At first it looked fierce and mean but as Mr.CeeCee yanked on its chain its eyes changed. Its face went from aggressive to a look of desperation. The dog wouldn’t even try to tug back as expected it just accepted it, it was used to be dragged along by Mr.CeeCee trudging, scrolling, and walking wherever he went. It just wanted to make it through this world without being hurt too badly. We pitied the animal even as we looked through the smudged windows and even as we were in the back seat of a messy car attracted to a different kind of leash.

 

 

~~~  
Someone I Never Knew  
I had heard of him, from my mother and my other one. They would talk about Bernard. But it wasn’t a topic of discussion for me. I just noticed how she looked, MayMay was happy her eyes had been light up. She carried herself proudly, proud to have Bernard. I don’t really know what love was, but if I had to guess I would say it was what MayMay and Bernard had. I never met him or maybe I did but I have no picture, no face to remember. He was a man without a face, and yet had so much power. He was no Mr. CeeCee, he didn’t hang around hunger for attention and words. We never saw him so he must have been different from those we had met on her street, he must have been better. Bernard was like gravity, you can not see it but you know it had to exist. But then one day gravity didn’t exist, you didn’t feel it’s pull.   
It was a day full of words. I heard the words: heart attack, Bernard, sorry, MayMay, he died, dead, gone. We saw the tears roll down her cheek and we held her hand. We put our heads on MayMay’s shoulder knowing we couldn’t bring back what is lost. She gripped our hands and her tears fell from her face. She blew her nose and we saw her fall apart. We heard : he was the one, you should have married him, I know I know I know I know. Her gravity was gone. And we couldn’t bring it back. So we just held her hand and watched her float without. We never knew Bernard but he must have been a good person. He made MayMay have what she deserved.   
He brought something to her that I still can’t explain. Call it love but that's too simple of an explanation for what was between them. It was a pull unlike what I had ever witnessed, emotion like I had never felt. And somehow we knew this without ever seeing this, without seeing them, and now we would never feel the pull again.

 

 

 

~~~  
Some Things I Didn’t Know  
I didn’t know MayMay had a sister, I didn’t know that she died.  
I didn’t know MayMay liked to drink, I didn’t know that MayMay didn’t drink anymore.  
I didn’t know MayMay had been to rehab, I didn’t know how many times she had been.  
I didn’t know the house MayMay used to live in was her sisters, I didn’t know that's probably why she left.  
I didn’t know that Bernard was the love of MayMay’s life, I didn’t know what he looked like.  
I didn’t know that MayMay had waited a long time to get into the apartment building, I didn’t know why she left it.  
I didn’t know why MayMay kept the lights off upstairs, I didn’t know she couldn’t pay the bill.  
I didn’t know that I didn’t know MayMay.

 

~~~  
Striped Shirt  
MayMay always wore striped shirts. Striped shirts with white and some other color. You couldn’t tell which color was the stripe, but it was easy just to say they were white striped instead. She wore blue, green, orange, yellow and one “I heart New York City” T-shirt that we had given her from our last trip there. The stripes, they were harsh and straight. Clear as day cutting through the color, white separating everything. The lines never wavered and were always there, guarding their purity. But then again maybe it was because they hadn’t cut through the color. In fact the color had invaded them, pushing forcefully to blend. The white stripes were surrounded by these invaders, these attackers. And in the end, the white could not be called stripes anymore because they didn’t cut through the colors, they were being chopped up. Instead the white was just there. But then again white was everywhere in our lives, it was nice to see color winning one battle. White fences, white houses, white walls, white everything. The grass seemed to challenge and combat the fences, contrasting the stark white with their lush, new green. It was natural, safe and calming. The white houses fought against their sometimes colored trim, the garden in front, and the colors they held within their walls. The white walls fought against everything that leaned against them. There was always so much struggle between them, and honestly it just felt very meaningless.   
~~~  
The Tale of Two Mothers  
There wasn’t really a war between the two, my mother and my other one. But there energy seemed to battle one another’s. MayMay could be softer, while my mother tended to grow stronger rather than regress and become flexible. MayMay had her opinions that were from her life and emotions; my mother relied on fact. Both were strong, but my mother showed her strength more often. MayMay concealed it using it sparingly and only when necessary-- she was probably tired of being strong all the time, or she just didn’t care for it. Even the shape of their bodies gave them up, without saying a single word. My mother’s cheek bones were angular but with a touch of blush. MayMay’s were round and soft, no blush needed. My mother's hair was hardened by the hairspray she used every day; MayMay’s was always fluffy no matter what she did to it.   
Although they were different, these things didn’t make one better or worse than the other. MayMay was my soft cushion that I could fall and and I know I would be caught. My mother was the steady and unwavering hand that try to stop me from falling in the first place. MayMay taught me how to be soft and how to relax, my mother taught us strength and how to be effective. Together they were the best mothers. I was glad that they liked each other, people so different could have easily grown apart. Separated by their acute differences, but in a way their difference pulled them closer. Sometimes I felt if they were one, they would complete each other. Like two very different puzzle pieces that, by chance, happen to go together. They completed the jigsaw that ended up being my life, and I’m not really complaining.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
Down the Road  
Even though we probably spent too much time in the golden brown mini-van, it was not without reason a least. Being dyslexic, it was a given that we had to go to a tutor three times a week. Three times a week we would ride down a street named Forest Hill. The we would turn at a shopping center filled with shops we only looking at but never bought from. We went down that winding road and turned at a large tree that towered over us with the lightest of green leaves. Then we turned left at the first intersection, and then right at the small apple tree that we stole from a few times without getting caught.  
Then down that street to our tutor’s house. Our tutoring went in cycles. One would go into the house through this small door. We would be greeted with our tutor’s two cats, Snowy and Stumpy. Then after an hour one of us would come out and then another would go in repeating the same welcoming process.   
Our tutor always invited us in, but we just retreated to our car, like ants retreating to their hill. MayMay would always refuse her offer with the shake of her head or the dismissive wave of her hand. It seemed to us like such a forbidden land that all I could do was wander in through my mind, painting the picture of what it would look like. I imagined browns and greens, earthy tones. The room almost reflecting what the outside world had to offer. Sometimes I imagined it with reds, oranges, and whites, reflecting the color of brick and clay, of power and strength. But that was as close as I got to knowing for a while.  
Sometimes instead of sitting uselessly in our car we would go to the shopping center we had passed on our way there. We didn’t ever look in the stores, we just headed straight to the McDonalds. My siblings considered this a treat while I just considered it more of the same. The smell on the place was the same as the car’s and maybe a little bit worse. It smell old and rotten and covered in grease. It made my skin crawl and I opted to wait outside in the fresh air, not eating or drinking more than a water.

 

 

 

~~~  
What we Did  
We would sometimes venture from the walls our our car and sit in the sun, or play with rocks. But we grew tired of that eventually and just went back to our car to repeat the everlasting cycle of tutoring. Sometimes we would listen to the radio. We listened to the stations that MayMay knew, and we heard songs we didn’t know. The beats were faster and the words could be uncomfortable, but we listened all the same. We nodded at the words and the music as it flowed through us. We just tuned it out after a while.   
After a while I began to grow tired of the new music, which by that point didn’t sound new anymore it just sounded like more of the same thing. I usually brought a deck of cards to play with. I didn’t play games and I didn’t let anyone touch my cards. I built small rectangle houses on the floor of the car. The tangled and rough carpet was good to build on even though it didn’t match the black, white and red faces of the cards. I always made sure that the houses were pretty, sometimes I would build cities until there were no more cards left. Then I would imagine lives for the small people to live through. They would do normal things like everyone did. They didn’t wait in their cars all day. They didn’t pick up strangers off the street. They didn’t just eat fried chicken, and there was no Mr.CeeCee. Their lives weren’t always happy, but they were stable and clean and normal. I wanted to live in the card houses.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
The Tree at the End  
On that road, which had a dead end, there was this weed. It wasn’t like most weeds you would see growing on your lawn. No, with was the kind that actually grew into a full size tree if you let it. I know it sounds unbelievable, but we once long ago had one growing in our backyard once and we had to chop it down. But that tree where the road came to a dead end was small when we first got there. It looked familiar and different at the same time. Its leaves, a light green, contrasted sharply with the background of dark green and brown. It’s shape, although small was almost indignant and tough; It was as if the tree wanted to be the odd one out in the forest. But then again, the tree was still apart of the forest, it still existed and couldn’t be pushed out of focus. I smiled at the little thing through the fingerprinted windows of our ever moving prison.  
We would circle around it everyday and I would watch it grow before my eyes. I didn’t see magic that often through the tinted windows, but this could only be described as such. Everyday it grew bigger until it was bigger than our car. At that point I stopped watching it. Maybe it hadn’t been a weed after all. Maybe it was just a tree, a tree not recognized by most, but still a tree. A tree with different colors, and a a tree with a different shape. A tree that's seeds were blown by the merciless wind, or they clung onto a bird and were dropped there by chance. Either way the people of that house didn’t seem to care, so maybe I was wrong all along about the weed.  
Maybe the only things that are weeds are things that we make out to be wrong or different. After I stopped watching I forced myself to only look at it once a year. The last year that I went there I didn’t think it could get any taller. At this point it was as tall or taller than the house. I don’t know if it grew any bigger because I never looked at it again. Because after a few years we didn’t have to drive back there. I didn’t have to go to my tutor’s house. I didn’t get to see the tree anymore.

 

 

 

~~~  
The Storm   
Virginia is prone to storms, hurricanes, and just rain that liked to flush out all of the impurities that we had placed in its way. Wash away anything that laid in its path. In a way it was cruel and in another its strength was beautiful. And of course we were usually the thing it tried to push away. Us, in our minivan, sitting in the middle of her wrath. We apparently were the impurity that she deemed necessary to wash away with force. I always thought she could have just asked us before beginning her attack. To me it seemed kind of one sided but I didn’t think Nature cared either way, it didn’t have to be fair. Life wasn’t, why should she have been?  
The rain sounded like bullets on the roof of our car, or at least it sounded like bullets in the movies. Just when we thought it had let up Nature would strike again pelting us with more. She unleashed her thunder and lightning and we were scared by that. MayMay told us one time that thunder was just when the Devil was beating his wife. So I pictured Life beating up Nature and it didn't seem quite right to me. But in the car, attacked by a force unseen I didn’t really feel like fighting with MayMay. The Devil had nothing to do with the thunder, or the rain, or the hurricanes, or Nature. It was just Life trying to carry on and continue its business. It was neither evil or mean. In a way it was good and cleansing. You could tell it was good if after the rain you took the time to smell the earth and the air. That's why I wasn’t scared by the thunder and the storms. Even though the rain usually worked against our favor, it also helped us once in awhile. One day, a huge hurricane was trying to wash us away. We were frightened and that's when or tutor begged us to come inside. Strangely enough MayMay accepted the offer. I don’t know if it was the wind and rain that persuaded her or maybe she had grown just as bored with the golden prison as we had. Either way we were in and we never went back to sitting in that car again. 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
That Little Triangle Park  
It was a little triangle park, in the middle of the street making it separate into two. It had such a presence you would have thought it had sprung from the ground on its own accord, everyone else powerless to move it anywhere else, its roots too deep to unearth. It was a short, cheerful walk from our old house that was just as daily as the walk of a dog. Everyday I would feel its red, brick walls under my fingers as I brushed by. And I would always be the first to open its black painted, iron gates with as much force as I could muster. I would run to the sandlot that held everything I cared about back then. It had my metal playground with the monkey bars that I could swing on. It had my favorite swing set that I would always go to first when I arrived. The swings made you fly high into the air and it gave the greatest feeling of invincibility that a 5 year old could have. And I would jump when the swings were at their peak, and then I would come hurtling down to earth making the sand fly when I hit.   
I liked to try and climb the trees outside the sandlot. The trees were far away from the girls who played under the big pine tree. They had barbies and pink clothes and nice hair I didn’t understand. I had tried once to join in their play. They were friendly and nice but I didn’t belong with the pink and the dolls. I preferred the trees where I could see what everyone was doing, even though they weren’t that high off the ground. I liked to look down upon on the little babies with their mothers, the other small children playing in the sand, and MayMay on the iron bench watching us from afar. I also liked to look at the tall tree, with its big trunk and tough bark. Its leaves and branches would cover the park with shade and cool relief from the burning sun. I wanted to climb that too. But I couldn’t. There were just somethings I couldn’t climb, and there were somethings I just couldn’t look upon from high up in its branches.   
And now that I think back I’m alright with not climbing the big tree, somethings aren’t all that great to see. 

 

 

 

~~~  
Seasons  
I knew it was spring in the park when there was pink on the ground. The ground was like a trash can for the trees’ blossoms. They floated down silently down to the green and brown earth, colliding without as much as a sound. The blossoms were pink and soft, easily broken and weak. I would whack the petals off of a branch and watch them tumble down, pretending they were dancing in the wind with one another, only to see them land like all the others. Indefinitely stopping their swirling dance. When summer would come I would always wonder where the petals and the blossoms had gone.

I knew summer had come when the petals disappeared and when MayMay brought a whole tomato to the park. She would sit down, the red fruit concealed in a white plastic bag. Reaching in she would retrieve the plump fruit with salt and pepper packets from McDonald’s. She would rip the green stem off and pour a little of the salt and pepper in. Then she would take the bite, which always made me cringe. I didn’t like raw tomatoes like that. As the juices from the fruit ran down her chin I knew that it was summer again.

I knew it was fall when the leaves would change. The leaves would be green, but they would have a yellow vein that would slowly creep up on the rest of leaf. Soon it would be gold, red, and brown. They would start to fall like the petals and blossoms in the spring, except these made a crunching sound as they landed. We would pile the fallen and jump in, sending them on a short trip as our bodies crashed through them. 

I knew it was winter when we didn’t go to the park. I would watch the park from my foggy window, the rain sometimes blurring my view. The rain weighed everything down, both us and the park. I would remember the blossoms in the spring, the tomatoes in the summer, the leaves in the fall. And I would wait at the window for the pink to appear and spring to start again.

 

 

~~~  
Each Day  
MayMay comes in the door early and leaves late. She strides with a slight waddle up down and around. She gathers what lies on the ground--shirts, socks, pants--and throws them into an amassing pile at the foot of the stairs. Then she waits for the kids to trickle down the stairs, as raindrops on a window. They are slow and tired, but this is where the real day begins. For MayMay it’s not really about the picking up, folding, frying, and washing. She gets the kids dressed and fed. She talks and listens. She gives advice and laughs. She cares and nurtures the kids, like a mother bird would for her chicks. She pushes them out of the nest willing them to fly. But when they fall, she’s there to catch them, to hold them, to love them.

 

 

~~~  
And I Smiled  
I remember MayMay when I look through a window as my car passes the small laundromat. It's our laundromat, the one with the fingerprinted windows by those before. And the one with the white machines that were only interrupted by the vibrants colors of the clothes they contained. The one that squats between tall shiny buildings, hiding in their shadow are its grimy floors and dusty chairs.   
I made my mother stop once, long after MayMay and my short childhood. I made her pull over in front of the laundromat, our laundromat. I peered through my window into another one. Everything was the same as I remembered. I looked away from my window and I got out of the car. I walked towards the entrance and everything looked smaller in a way. I stopped at the entry way and just peered in. The machines were humming, the people were waiting, and the dust was settling. I breathed in the air as though I was breathing in my memories that I had buried somewhere deep in my mind. I remembered searching for pennies in between the machines and sitting bored on those chairs. I smiled to myself and I looked one last time seeing it all again. Then I close my eyes and I walk away. Back to my car and I look back watching it go out of view. I know I’m not leaving the place behind because somehow in this ever changing world, this place retains my life. Preserves it all and it didn’t change one bit. And I smiled.   
~~~  
The Dollar Store  
It was, in the nicest way possible, dirty. In not so nice terms it was utterly filthy. The smell was something close to unbearable but still we went. Every morning we would ride in the golden brown car, with dents in its bumper and a scratch down its length. It walls were white, which seemed to be a recurring experience in places that were dirty. The white walls were almost trying to make up for its grimy floors and dusty shelves. Just as the bright florescent lights tried to blind you to what surrounded you. I don’t know what Maymay ever did here because my siblings and I always made our way to the kids section. It was one, unusually lit aisle. It had everything thing from water balloons to barbie dolls. My brother would get cars, which would soon break but that didn’t matter. My sister would get barbies that she would then cut all the hair off of. I would sometimes get coloring booklets, I liked the feelings of coloring within the lines for once. Not always going crazy and crossing the lines that were blurred with all the times we had already gone over them. But my favorite thing to get was not in the kids section. It was at the front of the store, always for 99 cents. I loved to get the spicy cheetos. I liked to feel the heat of them on my tongue, I liked to pant over them as I ate them. They were always too hot for me but I always ate them all. My fingers were covered with the red spicy dust , and I watched my siblings play with the toys that wouldn’t be around for much longer and I was happy we went to the dollar store. And then the next day we would come back to its grimy floors and harsh light, but all that didn’t really mean anything, not anymore.   
Now it’s just a distant memory, clouded by the fog of age and time. We drive by it and now I only blink remembering everything and then it's out of sight. My mind switches gears and I don’t think about it, don’t think about it until I pass that store again.

 

 

 

 

~~~~  
The Block Once Broken  
It was cracked, the pavement, the paint, the people. Everything seemed to be weighed down, the people seemed to be bound here by this oppressive force. The houses all groaned with complaints and age, filled with shouts and dust. The fences that were once white, were turned grey and brown. Done to them by none other than life itself in its true and non discriminant nature. The tree were overgrown, but not with the natural beauty of the wild, but with a confined craze that searched for fertile ground to unwind its cramped roots, to escape the confining cement. Everything was tainted, everything was damaged, everything was broken.  
But it's different now. Everything is new, clean, and together. Like the world has washed the block away, as though it would rather forget it. Somehow it replaced it with this “better” version. The roads are clean no longer lined with trash and broken glass. The trees look better, pruned and flourishing in the sun. The once white fences are white again, repainted to cover up what had happened, or maybe they were replaced altogether. Everything feels replaced, even the people were gone. The ones that sat on the porches as the summer air blew no longer sit and talk. The ones that watched the road from behind their windows no longer peer. I no longer recognize this place, it has turned into something I don’t remember. I can barely feel those who used to live here. I barely feel my past, I can hardly see it as I stare down the street. It all feels foreign to me, all I know is that MayMay is no longer there. Not here where she used to live and not anywhere that I can find. Thats enough to make any place that I used to know feel different, alien, changed. This block was once broken and now I don’t know what it is.

 

 

 

 

~~~  
But it Wasn’t  
I see her, standing in line mere feet away from me. But I’m not sold on the idea that it is MayMay. She wearing the striped shirt, the same white pants. Her hair is identical, all tied back and sharp, looking as coarse as I remember it being. She body is familiar to one I once knew, all soft and round, inviting hugs from me. I should have started to feel hope, started to feel excited. After all this time, seeing her so casually, seeing her so randomly. But somewhere inside I knew it wasn’t her, even before she turned around and her face betrayed my memory. Her face sharp, her structure slightly too narrow. But her eyes, that's when I knew it wasn’t her. Her eyes were dull, thoughtless, nothing like the always emotional gleam they once conveyed. It never seems to be her, and this time it wasn’t. Maybe it would never be her, but I will have at least tried. Tried for MayMay, who maybe doesn’t ever think about our time together. Maybe my emotions have betrayed me, tossing around the idea that her time with us wasn’t just a job. Maybe she's dead and all I can do is chase the ghosts of the past, putting the pieces of my memory together. But I have to believe in something, and I suppose I have to try; I have to try for MayMay.

~~~  
Bags in the Dark  
On the broken block that MayMay used to reside, inside her house and at the top of the stairs, there was a room. A room with the curtains drawn and the lights never on. Bags, big black garbage bags amassed together on the floor, like barrier to something that might be finding in the depths of the room. Little light ever entered the room, it oozed with an ominous presence that I avoided at all costs. To look through the doorway, of which was always open, sent chills down my spine. The door was never closed to that room, almost inviting me to be lost in its sea of black garbage bags. But the room was not just of bags, the mystery of what was in the bags was always in the back of my mind. I never dared to touch a single bag nor did I ever enter the dark place. Once I stood at its threshold. I gazed into its darkness and I felt an overwhelming urge to cry. To cry for what, to cry for whom I do not know. I felt compelled to cry for something, maybe for what was in the bags. Clothes of the dead, or the shunned reminders of the past. That's all I can assume that can be trapped inside the black bags. I can only assume those two because that's how MayMay lived, everything so on the surface you didn’t dare touch or question. The things that often were the most sensitive she let you stumble upon and then never want to ask. Those bags. themselves were just how MayMay grieved, how to dealt with her life. I never asked, I never touched, I just cried for them, whatever they might have been.  
~~~  
Everyone Came to Her To Die  
The way I knew MayMay was like a child knows a bedtime story. Everything cheerful, filled with glee and ending is happiness. And like a bedtime story, they are told over and over again, almost becoming a standard, never varying much. At some point that's how MayMay became to us, always the same everyday and no secrets to be uncovered. A simple person with a simple life. But at some point bedtime stories are accepted as stories, and fact is pulled out from fiction. MayMay’s life was like that, except their was more to her story, I only knew what lay upon the first pages.   
MayMay wasn’t the headstrong and slightly jaded women I assumed she had always been. But those are all effects of living, rather than an effect of being alive. Or maybe it's an effect of living with death. My mother told me MayMay once said that everyone came to her to die. That her family would show up sickly and useless, and she would take care of them. She would take care of them until death. Then her sister showed up, dying like the rest had. MayMay couldn’t bear to be the gateway to death again, to herald them towards the light as she sat in the darkness. So she left, she moved away. Away from the black bags of her past, and away from the broken street, to somewhere that at least she couldn’t see the damage. She moved into the apartments that held her old life away at an arm's length. Giving her enough room to breathe, but never to be able to give a deep sigh and relax. MayMay and everything she was, wasn’t an effect of birth, she was an effect of her life.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~  
I Saw Her Twice Again  
It’s not as if after we hired her, as though she disappeared into thin air. Not like her existence revolved around around my life. Then again, we did not drift away like a couple on the rocks-- no it happened and she did not care for us any longer. She did not come in early then leave us late. But, living in the small community that Richmond is, you eventually run into someone you know, you always do eventually. So it was inevitable that we would run into MayMay. And we did, we did twice.  
Once was at a gas station near the broken block, and there she was. She walked by us, without realizing who we were to her. Once we called her over, her eyes lit up and her smile was wider than I remembered. We talked, but we didn’t really talk. We talked as though she hadn’t raised me, as though we were distant friends catching up. It was off putting at best at the time and now it just seems like a pitiful conversation. We got her current phone number and went our separate ways. Not saying any of the things we were think and not doing the things we may have wanted to do. Thats where we were, in whatever remained of us. Just a casual thing, not acknowledging what begging for light to be shined upon it.   
The next time I saw her was because of the phone number she had given us that, at the time, still worked. She came over to “baby-sit” but it was more like reliving the past, even if it was just for 3 hours. Only a scratch of the hours we had spent together, barely scraped the surface of what we used to be. Maybe it was because I didn’t realized that this would be the last time I would she her for many years and maybe never again. We kept talking about the past and now I realize it's because “we” were completely in the past. “We” had no place in each other’s life any longer. “We” would forever be in the past. But now I cannot except that, I never accepted that.

 

 

 

 

~~~  
Dialing  
I pick up the phone and the piece of paper my father hands to me quietly. I know that this could be her number, the number that could be what connects the dots. The number that solves the puzzle, the number that brings us back. With careful steps I climb our wooden stairs, which creak under my footsteps. I close the door behind myself, trying to shut out everything else from what could be. I look down at the paper with the numbers, now crinkled from my grasp. I dial with shaky fingers, punching in the numbers gingerly, as though I could break at any moment. Then I hit the green call button. I hold my breath.  
It doesn’t even ring. A phrase I most certainly did not want to hear pulses into my ear. A mechanical voice tells me the the number has been disconnected. The little hope within me is extinguished. I hit the red button and I drop the phone on my bedspread, the feelings of defeat slowly creep upon me. I feel tired and I close my eyes and imagine I had her number. I imagine it wasn’t disconnected. I imagine she was here. I just lay there, looking up at my ceiling now unsure of what to do. Even more unsure of how I was supposed to feel. What would I say to her if I ever saw here again. Would I just pretend that time had not passed, that we had not changed. Or would it be cold and detached, just as our last time was. but that wasn’t important now, now I needed to find MayMay. For what reason, I do not know.  
~~~  
Worship  
Worship, something I was accustomed to as a child, not so much now. I worship the truth rather than a god. I didn’t just worship in the wooden pews, but also by watching MayMay. Every message seemed gospel, every action sacred. Her life lessons, although now flawed, seemed to brim with some kind of irrefutable truth back then. The way she went about doing daily tasks seemed almost prayerful in its own private way. Every sin or falter, absolved with a quick touch of her knowing hand. We were converts to follow her life, to study it with awe. To praise this way, to understand it in our native states of mind.  
Then I grew, my idol once tall now began to crumble in front of my changing form. Her words and tails began to lose their structure, sound no longer, sacred no longer. Although her awe decayed, she still held some tie to us. Still we were loyal to her, she a god to us. And then gone, when our faith destroyed we grew bored of her, of her gospel, of her message, of her life. No longer did we worship her.  
I don’t give worship to anything except the truth. Though my unshakable faith in MayMay is gone, I still hunger for her back. Hunger for her as anyone does after they have lost something, someone. If I find her, I will not worship but love her.

 

I Sit Here  
I sit here typing the final pages of this “book” still just as unsure of where MayMay is as when I first started to write it. I don’t know if I would call this a book, it's more like the ramblings of an unsure soul. Unsure of everything, trying to find another lost and unsure soul. I sit here think what else to write and I find nothing but that don’t know if I want to find MayMay, maybe I don’t want to know where she is. Or maybe I have given up hope. I wrote this book to remember MayMay, but somewhere inside of me I thought that by writing this book and I would find her. That maybe she would just magically appear after my poetic recount of my life with her. But that's not how this all ends, I don’t want to keep searching. I don’t want to keep trying to uncover what is lost to time and my fading memories. I’ve grown weary of my unrelenting hope. So this is how my final pages will end. Anyone reading will probably be mad, or will have not even gotten this far because they found my drabble boring. And for that I will not blame you. But to those that have made it this far I have a message for you all. Try not to let those you love slip to the back of your mind. For that is where memory goes to die. It sits there and is slowly torn apart. I will never forget MayMay, writing this I am crying, crying for MayMay. I will always remember. This was my life with MayMay.


End file.
